November 12th: Archetypes, air quotes, libidos, &c.

"There is no 'reality' without quotes around it."

FRONT MATTER

- Read Chapter 12 of Calasso.
("I have a little note to myself here. It says, 'The End'.")

- Make a hundred air-quotes over coversations you have in the next few days. See what happens. Blog about it.


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

- 'To invite the gods is to ruin our relationship with them...'
--Calasso

- Robert Graves' three archetypes of the woman:
= The Daughter
= The Mother
= The Crone

- "Freud says we should all be unconfined polymorphous infantile balls of sexual energy. But we are repressed. So we sit on psychoanalysts' couches and tell them our dreams. 'Oh,' they say, 'You dreamed of a "pencil". You dreamed of a "house".'

- "All dancing is dirty dancing; the tango, waltzes... You may say, 'You have a dirty mind', well, so do you. There's no one innocent here."

- "Heat only goes one way. Soon the universe will be room temperature. But what makes heat? Body heat, animals coming into heat; don't stop moving. Keep doing the tango.
Even thinking generates heat. Don't stop moving."
- Libido/Life-Force/Sexual Life Force

"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm."

- "The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" by Dylan Thomas

- The Story of the Fisher-King

- Alternative story to The Fisher King found in T.S. Eliot's poem, 'The Waste Land', found here.
(A sample...

    I. The Burial of the Dead

  April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust..."

- from 'The Waste Land', by T.S. Eliot)

- The (Grimm) Story of Rapunzel
("It's a more horrifying story, but it's a more interesting story. What does this tell you? The memorable things are the awful ones.")

'The gods get bored with men who have no stories.'
--Calasso


ET CETERA

"The gods' wedding gift was one disaster after another. They know something we don't. The one worthwhile thing you can be in this life is interesting."

"Maybe Medusa was beautiful the whole time, and she was just looked at the wrong way."

"The man's always kind of a dope, isn't he?"

November 5th & 7th: Displaced Myth Avalanche!

"Everything that happens to us is a displaced myth."

FRONT MATTER:

- Mr Sexson's congratulations on the excellence of the displaced myths. As a consequence, there will be no second quiz. Instead,  the next two classes will be just stories, and more myths.

- Write a blog post of your displaced myth, drawing attention to all the parts that should have tipped us off to which myth it is, had we not been so dumb.

Some of the myths we heard (even if we didn't necessarily recognize them):

- The story of Esther

- Ariadne and Theseus and the Minotaur

- Odysseus and the Cyclops

- Herakles and Nessus

- Robin Hood

- Pentheus

- Prometheus

- Perseus and the Cretan Bull

- Achilles

- Orion and Scorpio

- Adam and Eve

- The Maenads  and Dionysis

- Herakles and his 12 tasks

- MacBeth

- The Story of Bearskin, by the Brothers Grimm

- Dionysis and Acarius

- Daphne and Apollo

- Herakles and Dionara

- Beauty and the Beast

- Daedalus and Icarus

October 31st: Flourescent lights, asps, knots intrinsicate, &c.

"You ain't boogied 'til you've boogied with the dead."

FRONT MATTER:

- Next Tuesday (November the 5th): Displaced myths! Have them at the ready.

- Remember to remind Mr Sexson to tell more death stories in lecture.


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS

"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love."
- from 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning' by John Donne



"The most important thing is it can happen just like that. Shakespeare writes, 'The readiness is all.' Just like that, and you're gone."

Consider checking out the book 'Finnegan's Wake' by James Joyce.
"...the language becomes so mythological it becomes almost dreamlike... you're not supposed to understand it. You're supposed to dance with it."

"...untie this knot intrinsicate." - Cleopatra.

"Alas! I knew him Horatio!" - Shakespeare

“Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - Shakespeare


ET CETERA

"Once you're gone, you're gone. You exist only in people's memories."

 "We are here on the earth for one purpose, and that purpose is to sing."

"Isn't that a wonderful word to say? Asps. ASPS. Asps. ... Asps."

"Lucretius would say that death is not something to be fearful of. Obliviousness is not something to be fearful of because... you're oblivious. Death is not something we experience."

"All of life is enriched by your reflection reflection on death."

"(Lucretius) would say that we do not die, we are merely reassembled... Like into the horrible lights in this room, which are humming.
*looks up at flourescent lights for a time*
That used to be an old friend of mine."

October 29th: Daimons, coincidences, tragedies, &c.

FRONT MATTER

Halloween is coming up; be thinking about the dead.
 
- Read other people's blogs.
- Blog about 'The Storyteller'.


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS

Animism - 'Animating spirit', "What gets you out of bed in the morning."

Daimon, Daemon - A benevolent or guiding spirit, a demon in the archaic sense of the word, an animal spirit that is a part of you.

"To give heed to coincidence is to give rise to further coincidences." - Vladimir Nabokov

Anagnorisis - A moment of critical discovery; a decisive moment.

"Oedipus is perhaps the most exemplary example of a Greek hero..."
Other examples:
- Superman
- Moses
- Harry Potter
- Heracles
- Jesus

    'Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'
       - The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats 

'One fell swoop...' - Shakespeare


ET CETERA

The Homeric worldview: 'It's better to be alive than dead.'
"We only have one shot at it. We only have our one moment in the sun. And we can either do it, or not."

"Tragedy is 'Better to have never been born.'
Now that's bleak, is it not, boys and girls?"

October 24th: Oracles, riddles, abandoned babies, &c.

"We tell our stories to save our lives."

FRONT MATTER:

- Over the weekend, startle Mr. Sexson. Begin your blog post on 'The Storyteller' with "I was startled to read..."
For good measure, throw in some of Mascarita's refrains (Perhaps, I believe, maybe, it seems...).


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

"There are people who know you better than you know yourself."

'Oedipus and Sphinx', by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1808.

- "Somewhere between the priest and the shaman lies the storyteller."

(Priest = 'The one who tells you how to live and what to do'. Shaman = 'The one who has been there, and come back to tell about it.')

The Story of Oedipus, with its oracles, sphinxes, incest, and more!

Morpheus = Sleep, dreams, and morphine.

Empathy = The heart of imagination.

'Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.'
— Mario Vargas Llosa


ET CETERA:

"We all live pretty much boring lives. ... Yet if we tried to tell the complete story of a single day we'd never be done with it."

"Our days are made up of obstacles, and we are heroes, too. We drag ourselves into bed at the end of the day and think, 'Whoa. I don't know if I can do that again.'"

"Why? The oracle speaks in riddles so we have to think deeply about what she is saying."

"We wouldn't have fairy tales and romances if we didn't have babies left out in the hills and forests."

"The human intelligence is very large, and it knows the answer to every question, except... 'Who are you?'"

"As long as you can keep your story going, you can keep the executioner's blade at bay."

October 22nd: Giant cockroaches, food for worms, priorities, &c.

FRONT MATTER:
October 29th: Read 'The Storyteller'....For real.
November 5th: Displaced myth presentations.
November 14th: Final quiz.
November 26th: Recitation of final blog posts/term papers ('That, anyway, is what I have learned').

IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis'
- "The greatest evil is distraction."

'Pharmakos' (a cripple, beggar, etc) --> Pharmacy. 

"(Social networking) is mostly talking about cats and watching people fight."

'The Infinity of Lists', a book by Umberto Eco

"so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens."
- 'Red Wheelbarrow', by William Carlos Williams
"...and so much really does. All of a sudden it's become a matter of life and death.  Everything is a matter of life and death. What will you do with your 24 hours?"

"All rituals can be described in two ways: The 'filling up' (pleurosis) or the 'emptying out' (kenosis).

"To see a World in a grain of sand,   
And a Heaven in a wild flower,   
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,   
And Eternity in an hour.… "
- from 'Auguries of Innocence', by William Blake


ET CETERA:

"Who is happier or purer because he has renounced his destiny, I ask you? Nobody."

"What are the things we've forgotten? In one word? Everything."

"All teaching becomes a kind of nudging. You cannot teach anything—you can merely remind someone of what they have forgotten."

"We all have the exact same number of hours in the day. It's all a matter of priority."

"'What are you reading?' I ask. 'I don't have time,' they always reply. It is not a question of time but a matter of priority. I plead to you: make it a priority."

"There is nothing that is boring. The only thing that's boring is you. When you say something is boring you are merely admitting that you are not looking at it in a wide enough context."

"Let me tell you something—it don't get no realer than here. The 'real world', that thing out there, is a complete fantasy. Nothing is ever more real than right here."

"These are not repititions, but refrains."
 

October 17th: Goddesses in disguise, myths in hiding, heads exploding, &c.

"But what is the opposite of your head exploding?
Your head not exploding." 


FRONT MATTER:
 - Be thinking about a Displaced Myth you will be reciting to the class. This is a classic, recognizable myth that has been hidden beneath ordinary circumstances and language so as only to be recognizable if one properly enlightened knows where to look. This class, hopefully so enlightened, will act as the ideal audience to guess the myth you have hidden.
1 - Needs to be probable.
2 - Two to three minutes long.
3 - A myth we know.

- Read 'The Storyteller' by Mario Vargas Llosa by Oct. 22nd. 


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBTS

"The Story of Antigone", daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta, and the controversial burial she performed. 

"The Story of Demeter and Demophoon",
("This is a story about a mother and her daughter. Men don't understand. But men never understand.")

The Temenos, a space (a temple, a classroom, a house), where, inside, everything becomes sacred, while outside, everything becomes profane.  
"Something was said."
"Something was done."   
"Something was seen."

"Is it possible for you to use language in such a way as to heighten it to it's utmost?"

The Cults of the Dead.
("If you invoke the dead in the proper way you will access some essential knowledge.")

Guy Mattison Davenport - (November 23, 1927 – January 4, 2005) an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.


ET CETERA

"Mythology makes the world disappear."

"This great bubbling ocean of myth is seething beneath the earth, just waiting to be recognized."

"If we know how to lament the dead we are enriching our lives."

"Sometimes I digress so much I forget where I started."

"Do things. See things. Hear things. You don't see anything—That's you're problem."

October 10th & 15th: Initiation Extravaganza!

  I. Jubilation, II. Mortification, III. Purgation, IV. Invigoration

"Twenty years from now, when someone asks you— 'How did you lose your pinkie?' 
You will say, 'Lit 285.'"

"What have we lost? What have we gained?

"What perhaps you have been noticing is that this class is an elaborate initiation ceremony."


INITIATIONS:
— Momote - Shiki, (archery ceremony)
—Menawta teeth-sharpening
—Krypteia (the hunting and killing of slaves by boys)
—Nacirema
—Mandan (Okipa)
—Festa de Mocas Nuevas (isolation in a hut to all but family)
—Heaven's Gate
—Boot camp
—Turning 21
—Scarification
—Wild horse races (Hippolytus)
—Getting a doctorate in physics
—Mardudjara ('Subcision', and the mutilation of the penis)
—Bullet-ant glove ("If you live your life without pain, it's not worth living.")
—Fulahi tatros (Facial tattoos, for the women)
—Whip match (Struggle against flinching, for men)
—Vision quests
—Wicca
—Walkabout ('Song lines')
—Camar cow-jumping
—Mafia
—Female circumcision 
- Aztec (The sacrificing of prisoners)
- Motorcycle club
- Sambia (Bloodletting and 'Tingu', or purification. Removal of all feminity)
- Tapas
- Matausa (bloodletting)
- Igonguin/Alonguin
- South Korean shamanism (dancing on a sword)
- Crossing-the-line (Sailor initiation)
- Land-diving (Naghol)
- Pederasty
- Iria Ceremony
- Sweet 16

October 8th: Gray pudding, winged lovers, rampion, &c.

"You introduce a male into the equation, and the whole world goes to hell."

FRONT MATTER:

Initiation Presentations, this Thursday, the 10th.

Remember to have 'The Storyteller' read by October 22nd.

Remember to post your one-page analysis of Calasso.


IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS

Nostos - 'Home'. (Nostalgia, etc.)

The Story of Eros & Psyche

'Cupid and Psyche' by Bouguereaus,1889

A very good retelling can be found here. 

'The Institution of Marriage
- "All marriage is rape."

Kore - another name for Persephone, maiden daughter of Demeter.

Chthonic - Pertaining to the underworld.

Entropy - room temperature. "You cannot unstir the jam from the pudding. Such as it is with the universe."


ET CETERA

"That's Psyche's problem. She's a bimbo.
We're all bimbos."

"We're no longer in high school. We are initiated into something much larger, and things here are very dicey."

"What are coincidences? Syncronicities."

"When a meme has a bad day, it's a virus."

October 1st: Quiz #1, and the weekend's reading, in pages.

"Wherever you happen to be is the center of the world. Whatever tree you hug is the center of the world. You're in the right place, in other words. The question is, do you realize that?"

Jean, pg. 125, 'Nemesis'
Austin, pg. 270, 'Rhodopis'
Kelly, pg. 144, 'Delphic Oracle'
Parker, pg. 143, 'Herophite'
Annie, pg. 9, 'Gustave Moreau'
Kristy, pg. 145, 'Apollo & Dionysis'
Mac, pg. 245
Melissa, pg. 4
Kim, pg. 69, 'Women's Betrayal'
Elise, pg. 249, 'Repetition of History'
Megan, pg. 390 & 39, 'The end is the beginning'
Ian, pg. 59, 'Divine fire'
Cavin, pg. 127, 'Helen'
Michelle, pg 363
Jordyn, pg. 63, 'Hercules'
Mackenzie, pg. 74
Siri, pg. 197, 'Persephone's abduction'
Zach, pg. 109
Noah, pg. 79
Sebastian, pg. 49
Ben, pg. 209, 'The abduction of Persephone'
Victor, pg. 53

October 1st: Quiz #1 Review

#1 - When was Kelly born?
- July 25th, 1988, Mankato Hospital, Mankato MN.

#2 - The three important parts to this class:
- You, me, myth. Radical simplicity.

#3 - The three levels of relationships with the gods.
- 1) Convivialty
- 2) Rape (A sudden invasion)
- 3) Indifference

#4 - The three parts (of myth)
- 1) Seperation (from family/home)
- 2) Initiation (Pain)
- 3) Transformation/return (Ending up where you began)

#5 - Mnemosyne. The mother of nine muses.

#6 - The principle images behind all myth:
- The woman,
- and the Snake.
(And with neither one having a very good reputation)

#7 - Etiology:
- the study of origins.

#8 - Axis mundi:
'Axis' = 'center', 'Mundi' = 'world.
The center, navel, pillar, tree, etc. of the world.

#9 - Myth is the precedent...:
behind every action.

#10 - Zeus' impregnation of Leda led to:
- The Trojan War (through the birth of Helen)

#11 - The Story of Apollo and Daphne

#12 - The Story of Actaeon and Diana

#13 -  The Story of Arachne

#14 - 'Mythos' and 'Logos' = ...
'Truth' and 'Story'

#15 - 'In illo tempore'...
'In the big/great time..."

#16 -  'The Collective Unconscious':
- (by C.J. Jung) A zone of the mind which opens down into all of knowledge.

#17 - What did Io as a heifer stamp into the ground when she needed to catch her father's attention?
What else?
Io.

#18 - The most frequent elements in world cosmogony...
1) Creation ex nihilo.
(A high being creates the world from nothing, whether by thought, word, or heating himself in a steampot, etc.)
2) The earth-diver motif. 
(A being sends birds, amphibians, himself, etc., to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve a particle from which all the land is grown from)
3) Creation by diving in two a primordial unity. 
(Often either the separation of heaven and earth or the birth of those parts through the separation of an original, amorphous mass)
4) Creation by the voluntary or involuntary dismemberment of a primordial being. 

#19 - The earth-diver myth is the most common of all creation myths.

#20 - Europa. Know her. (See pg. 1)

#21 - The Greek Creation Story

#22 - Pasiphae and the bull led to...
What else? The Minotaur.

#23 - The Story of Asclepius, the Caduceus, and Divine Fire

#24 - The Story of the Abduction of Persephone

#25 - Unpack the word enthusiasm
En (or 'inside') + Theos ('the gods')
'The god is inside you.'

#26 - Maenads:
The female devotees of Dionysis. 

#27 - 'Sparagmos':
'To rip, to shred, to tear to bits.'

#28 - The Story of Nessus and Heracles' Death  

#29 - 'Uncle John':
Someone who has become obsessed with something 'meaningless' to give his or her life meaning.
("What's the dirty little secret? We're all Uncle John.")

#30 - 'When things were a nickel.'
- 'In the good old days', 'when the gods were convivial.'

#31 - Why do Greek men have small butts?
- Ask Theseus.

#32 - What happens to Semele when she sees Zeus in his full glory?
- She's toasted.

#33 - The Story of Tiresias
(When a god makes a promise, he cannot go back on it.)

#34 - The Origins of the word 'tragedy'.
- The Song of the Goat.

#35 - Raven, the bringer of light to the world.

September 26th: The perils of being mortal, divine fires, toast, &c.

"In the end, we're all toasted."


FRONT MATTER:

- Painful initiation rites: Know yours.

- Have a question ready for the October 1st review.

- Incoming quiz, October 3rd.

 IMPORTANT TERMS/INTERESTING TIDBITS:

The Story of Nessus and Heracles' Death

'Diana and Actaeon' (1603-1606) by Giuseppe Cesari

A story of poisoned arrows and poisoned blood...
Read more about Nessus' villainy here.

The Story of Actaeon
And his punishment for looking at Artemis as she bathed.
A succinct version of the story here.

The Story of Pentheus
And what happened when he insisted upon seeing the the Maenads' rituals.
Read more here.


    "The dove descending breaks the air
    With flame of incandescent terror
    Of which the tongues declare
    The one discharge from sin and error.
    The only hope, or else despair
    Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
    To be redeemed from fire by fire. (IV)

    Who then devised the torment? Love.
    Love is the unfamiliar Name
    Behind the hands that wove
    The intolerable shirt of flame
    Which human power cannot remove.
    We only live, only suspire
    Consumed by either fire or fire..."

—from 'Little Gidding' by T.S. Eliot.


ET CETERA:

"Ring around the rosy? Pocket full of posy? And you're singing about this in the third grade? My god."

"What would happen if old people didn't die? Don't old people sort of deserve to die?"

"(These are stories of) what happens to people when they commit the hubris of being born."

"You're going to get it in the end.
What does that mean? It might mean we're not going to make it out alive.
Or...
You're going to get it. You're going to understand."